The Law: Mitchell's 60-Case Mistake

What the U.S. needed, Richard Nixon said again and again during his 1968
campaign, was "a new Attorney General." When Bond Lawyer John
Mitchell moved into the Justice Department after the election, he went
all out to make good on Nixon's implied promise that the country's top
legal officer would know how to use wiretaps to fight organized crime.
Last week that promise, like so many others from the law-and-order
Nixon Administration, collapsed dramatically. The Supreme Court ruled
that a sizable chunk of Mitchell's taps were improper and illegal. At
one stroke, the decision wiped out nearly two years of dogged...